The medical center at Keesler Air Force Base — the second largest in the Air Force, and home to the only genetics laboratory in DoD — took a huge hit from hurricane Katrina… (more…)

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We live in an age of medical miracles, and thank goodness. Medicine can treat and cure many illnesses; surgery can repair, enhance, and re-attach organs and limbs; medical devices can purify our bodily fluids and keep our heart beating. Most of these incredible discoveries have come about in the last several decades, going back not much farther than the last 100 years. It truly is remarkable - and the future looks even brighter with advances in chemistry, techonology, and biology. So: as a healthcare administrator, as a patient, as a father and husband, and as the son of a physician and a surgical nurse, I am keenly aware of the absolutely incredible discoveries, abilities, and use of medicine and all of the related skills, tools, and technologies. My life is much better with Paxil; my kids are beneficiaries of the occasional round of amoxicillin; my wife would have died during childbirth if she lived 100 years ago; both of my children were C-section; my appendectomy in 2002 was a mini-marvel of laparascopic surgery; my father’s prostate cancer was healed via surgery. We are indeed living in an incredible time.

But when it comes to a simple fractured bone, the best we can do is put a cast on it and keep it immobile. “Don’t move this part of your body for five or six weeks!” Say what? This is really the best that we can do for a broken bone?!?

I’ve seen a few clips on TV and read a few articles the last few years about the use of maggots in helping people with infected wounds. I’m sure most people are utterly disgusted at the thought of a bunch of maggots literally eating their flesh — but it’s only dead flesh that they eat.

Doctors or nurses place dozens of the baby maggots in a single wound — they’re tiny before they start gorging on dead flesh — and then cover them with a dressing to keep them from wandering off. Typically, the maggots stay in place for a couple days, becoming larger as they chow down.

Here’s a picture of the little buggers hard at work (do NOT click if you’re squeamish!). And now the little critters have received the blessing of the FDA:

Last year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved maggots as a “medical device” and Britain has also made them available on prescription within the National Health Service, demonstrating how maggots are entering the mainstream.

If I had one of those leg ulcers, I don’t think that I’d have a problem with maggots helping me to heal. How about you? How significant is the “ick factor?”